On 7th November 2019 the EASVO General Assembly took place in Brussels at the International Auditorium.
We had another busy and engaging agenda, where we received our regular updates on the work of the Food Safety Working Group, including progress on OCR implementation and the development of a paper on the circular economy, the AHL task force and the implementation of the Veterinary Medicines Regulation. We also discussed our membership fees and, although our costs are increasing, we were able to maintain our fees for 2020 but will need to keep this under review.
We were grateful that Sean Wensley (chair of the AWWG) joined us to provide an update on the work of the new group and we had a detailed discussed on the position paper on preventing pig tail biting and reducing tail docking, which we agreed to support in the FVE GA vote.
As is now the tradition, EASVO members gave interesting presentations on an audit of AW in slaughterhouses in Switzerland, the potential to use the EU Animal Health tool, Discontools, as an information resource for government vets, an update on the situation in Germany for long distance transport of animals and, finally, an update on the progress of the VetCEE sub-committee developing the Dossier of Competence for Veterinary Public Health.
We were pleased to join UEVP (practitioners) in a joint session on the current implementation of the Zoos Directive and the implications for conservation and animal health - “One Health, One Welfare, One Plan”
Finally we were delighted to see EASVO’s new website and we elected our new board for 2019-2021 - President – Jane Clark (UK); Treasurer – Conny Rossi-Broy (DE); General Secretary – Ole-Herman Tronerud (NO); Vice President – Mark McCarthy (IE); and Senior Vice President – Romano Zilli (IT) and thanked Fabien and Pavel, the outgoing VPs, for their contributions.
